More photos are being taken now than ever before and photograph sharing among and between people is becoming more and more popular. Arguably, the most heavily shared images are social photographs, that is, photographs of social nature including people as subjects which may be taken at events, such as weddings, parties, sporting, and other events, or which may also be taken elsewhere, beyond the confines of an event. People photographed generally have a strong desire to gain access to the photographs they are in, and those individuals who snap a photograph of people often have a moderate desire to share that photograph with those people in the photograph. While over time advances in digital, Internet, and mobile technologies have continued to lower barriers to sharing photographs, there are still significant challenges associated with doing so, and particularly with privately sharing photographs with intended recipients. Currently, it is common for photographs to be shared via email, text message, Facebook, and Instagram to name a few sharing methods, and placed on websites to which persons interested in accessing photographs can go to view, retrieve, download, or purchase the photographs. While the aforementioned sharing methods and technologies make it easier now to share photos than ever before, there are a few major drawbacks to these sharing methods. First, these sharing methods are not automatic; they require manual activity not only on the part of the photo-sharer, but to varying extents also on the part of the photo-share, and, as a result of such hurdles, often photographs are not successfully shared. Secondly, photos files are being shared through a wide variety of mediums and are being stored in a wide variety of locations, which can make accessing and managing photos very challenging. Yet another significant drawback to several of these sharing methods is that the photographs may become public domain, or semi-public domain, accessible by either a very small amount or larger amount of people whom either the publisher of the photographs and/or the subjects in the photographs may not want to view them, or by recipients who do not wish to view them.
Moreover, in the case of professional photographs taken at weddings and other events, proof books or website links are often sent around to the people who engaged the photographer(s) and sometimes to other event attendees who might be interested in accessing some of the photographs. This results in a delay between the event and the ability of attendees to access photographs in a timely fashion. This also requires effort on behalf of users to seek out the photos that they may want access to.